


In the Darkness, There Was Always You

by Megalohdon



Category: Persona Series, Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mainly bc I love to suffer, Persona AU, This is just a lil drabble for Nic, Viktor is the shadow and Yuuri gets roped in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 18:40:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10927725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megalohdon/pseuds/Megalohdon
Summary: “I’m curious, my Juliette, what could you want to talk about?”Inhale.Exhale.Breathe.It’s not real.“Anything. Everything. Whatever you want, Viktor, I’ll listen to you, I promise. I’ll never run from you.”





	In the Darkness, There Was Always You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crowtective](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowtective/gifts).



Loving someone is a truly special thing.

It’s all encompassing; it's a latched breath in your throat and a skipped beat of your heart. It’s the way your knees quiver and your hands shake, the beading sweat along the line of your brow that threatens to give you away and that swollen feeling of your tongue that has you tripping over your words.

Love is embarrassing.

Love is worth it.

It is not, however, without its hardships. It’s not without fought battles and feint scars that threaten to reopen when you’re looking back on past conflicts. Love isn’t _perfect,_ but it’s worth it.

Perhaps that’s why Yuuri stood center ice, hands balled into tight fists to quell his shaking and brows furrowed out of desperation, looking on at the looming behemoth that hung himself over the side of his barrier boards.

“Viktor, please, just listen to m-”

“Newsflash, _assholes,_ I’ve been holding myself back this entire time.”

Syllables popped with venom and echoed against the emptied stands that surrounded their party; Viktor had ushered them out with much fanfare, claiming “total dominance could only come from a man who relied on himself”. It wasn’t necessarily a _secret_ that he was feeding off of the audience’s energy, but it was something he was willing to give up on his own for the sake of saving face.

Viktor Nikiforov was _not_ a weak man, shadow or not.

He was a monstrous thing across the darkened rink, his torso only hanging over the boards he guarded himself with and hands holding himself up against the scarred surface of the ice. He was large, more so than would ever remotely be natural, and Yuuri could have sworn one of the Thieves had made an offhanded comment about finally being able to contain that massive ego, but Viktor’s form was so much more than the man he touted himself as.

He was wispy hair that stood on end, dancing with a peculiar livelihood to it that would concern his opponent if it weren’t for the fact that he knew exactly where they were. Anything was possible in the Metaverse, after all. This was Viktor’s cognition of himself. A man with a shattered face, no mouth or nose in sight, and one golden glowing eye peering down at them through the filtered moonlight with an overwhelming weight of hatred.

His cognition had shackled him to this rink, large cuffs around his neck and wrists anchored him to the building and the ice, and Yuuri understood it better than the seven kids behind him ever would. He understood imprisoning yourself in your future, trapping yourself within your goals, and throwing away the key to your freedom because you were an adult now, it was time to take responsibility and give up on _dreams._

_Dreams are for children, Yuuri._

_Grow up._

“Please, I just want to talk to you.”

The rink seemed to shift with Viktor’s movements, his hands dragging his impossibly long torso even further across the boards, pulling himself to his limits just to bring his face down to his opponent’s level. It was odd being face to face with him like this, the cognition of a man he had adored so much as a child, broken and beaten by the expectations that he set up for himself, white as death and nearly translucent in complexion.

Oh, how empty he was.

“I’m curious, my Juliette, what could you want to talk about?”

_Inhale._

_Exhale._

_Breathe._

_It’s not real._

“Anything. Everything. Whatever you want, Viktor, I’ll listen to you, I promise. I’ll never run from you.”

“Oh?”

Its stranger to hear Viktor speak with no mouth, a humming echo of his voice wrapping itself around Yuuri instead as he communicated telepathically, than it was to face a man in which Yuuri only came up to his cheekbone. Worlds apart, eons away.

_But we’re not that different._

Viktor's laugh is as cold as the ice itself, a stabbing bark that wedges itself comfortably right between the bones in Yuuri’s ribcage and clutches itself around his heart. It’s a pained sound, a practiced noise of joy because it was so ingrained into his mindset to be the man the media wanted.

The athlete he was raised to become.

“You’ve already run from me, don’t you see? You’re elusive, I’ll give you that,” the shadow muses, one large index finger gently rapping against the ice impatiently, “But I was stubborn anyway, no?

“I wanted to be selfish for once. I wanted something so unabashedly raw and _natural,_ and I wanted _you._ I was desperate for that spark of life you had, and you let me hold it, if only for just a night. And God,” he breathed, breath ragged and uneven even if it was only a mental projection, “I treasured that feeling; the freedom. But you ran, like you just now promised you never would. You ran and took that spark with you, my heart in tow, and what was I supposed to do? Bend over? Accept defeat?”

Another roar of laughter sends the eight members of the infiltration team into a scramble to stay upright, and Viktor slams one boulder sized fist onto the ice and presses his face directly in front of Yuuri.

He only had eyes for Yuuri.

“So stop telling me you _won’t_ run and explain why you _did._ ”

“Viktor I-”

At his right a hand appears, steady and sure on his shoulder, and Yuuri is assuaged enough by Akira’s firm presence at his side to draw in a breath and focus.

Focus on the rattling of the chains with each agitated tug that Viktor makes.

Focus on the biting and familiar cold of the rink that kept both he and Viktor prisoner to their pursuits of perfection.

Focus on each inhale of the heavy atmosphere, the way it rattled around in his lungs and settled itself like it was made to live inside his chest.

Focus on the parts of this situation that kept it from reality, kept this situation from being real; the only things that separated himself from a truly broken Viktor that had settled himself into an empty routine of his own back home in St. Petersburg.

_I’m fine. It’s okay. I can do this._

“I was… I was scared, Viktor.”

“Of what, please humor me.”

“God, I don’t know? Everything?”

His own laugh surprised him, a bubble of anxiety that popped just as his control wavered, and he sent a hand over his mouth with a vain hope that he could _please just take that back._

But anxiety is a silly thing, tiny moments of honest self-doubt that send you spiraling into a destructive path of loathing and fear. Fear of one self, one’s futures, others, opinions.

Fear of happiness because how could someone so broken deserve something that was crafted specifically for the people in the world who shined the brightest with a smile on their lips and love in their eyes and he was never going to be one of them?

He was anxious regarding his own honesty, that near lifelong secret he had kept to himself now surfacing in a desperate attempt to just reach out to Viktor and get him to _listen._

A necessary self-sacrifice.

“I was never-never good enough. Not for myself, or for my family and friends, and I was never going to be good enough for you. I tried, God, I tried so hard to be someone who deserved to stand beside you but I didn’t. I couldn’t do it, I destroyed myself. I let myself have fun with encouragement of alcohol and the sheer desire to just be close to you but I got… scared, Viktor.

“So, yeah. I ran. I always do when I’m scared, I don’t know how to handle those situations. What are you supposed to do when you get blackout drunk and take fate by the horns and try to steer it in a better direction? What do you do when drunk you says that’s a great idea, but you sober up with a mountain of regret and no recollection of what you had done? Do you still fight for your future? Or do you back off?”

At some point he had started crying, he hadn’t paid attention close enough to exactly pinpoint _when,_ but the ugly puddles of his confession pooled over his lids and ran down his cheeks to find their home back down on the ice beneath his feet. How many times had he cried on the ice?

He chuckles again, taking his left wrist now up to his eyes to wipe away what tears threatened to spill next as he reached out his right hand and did the best he could to cup Viktor’s cheek given their difference in size.

“I ran because I know you deserve better, but you’re just as lonely and broken as I am. Fate has a cruel way of telling you she was right, huh?”

Viktor isn’t nearly as amused by the confession as Yuuri is, but he remains still and unguarded for the man who enraptured him so many months ago, the only unmasked guest at his ball whose name escaped him and attention drifted through his fingers faster than water fell from the tap. He doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, keeps his one eye unblinking and trained on the smaller man in front of him, and does his best to bite back any remark that builds up because now is _not_ the time.

It’s _never_ the time.

“You are here to take my heart, yes? To steal my treasure?”

“I-Yes, we are. We have to, Viktor, it’s for your own good.”

The boards that kept the lower half of Viktor’s body shielded make a quick exit to each side of the rink and allow him to sidle forth into a dogeza position, hands splayed in front of him and chains taught with restraint as the shadowy legend himself does his best to beg for what he deserves.

“You cannot steal a heart that does not exist,” he breathes, voice just above a whisper as he tilts his head up just enough to peek his eye out towards Yuuri again, and he speaks up once more;

“My Juliette, you have already broken my heart. You can’t let me down any more than you already have, so please, I insist.

“Ruin me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Another small drabble inspired by Nic ([NICHOLASonICE](https://twitter.com/NICHOLASonICE)) and his Persona AU, specifically [this](https://twitter.com/NICHOLASonICE/status/864669723245527040/photo/1) picture. It's small, but longer than I personally expected it to come out as! I don't have a beta, and honestly for the length I wouldn't have bothered one anyway if I did. I read through a few times to fix typos/grammar errors and make the sentence structure flow better in certain areas. Any errors are in part all my fault! This isn't a super serious work, just a way to let out my writing steam.
> 
> If you want to see MORE of the Persona AU from me, let me know and I'll see what I can do! For now I'll leave it here, but why not give you angst while I'm writing, huh?
> 
> You can find me under Megalohdon on both [Twitter](http://twitter.com/Megalohdon) and [Tumblr](http://megalohdon.tumblr.com). Thank you so much! 
> 
> Kudos, comments, and shares help me know you like what I'm doing!


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